Zala Fashant 

As a faculty member, faculty developer, dean and course design coach, Zala Fashant understands how course design plays a major role in student success and retention. He has seen first-hand the importance in designing an environment where every student grows and succeeds. Working with faculty through Dee Fink, he has shared these course design strategies nationally via workshops and online courses. Zala’s Big Dream is to help faculty impact their students by identifying and sharing their own Big Dreams in courses that prepare students for success in the classroom and workplace.

Zala Fashant has taught face-to-face, blended and online courses for 30 years and presented at many national conferences and faculty development workshops about using course communication to increase student engagement. He has seen the positive effect that happens when faculty engage their students at the very start, and throughout a course by two-way communication which allows and encourages all students to be included in learning.

Zala has helped faculty design quality assessments that lead to improved teaching and learning. As a dean, he utilized his departments’ assessments to promote each program’s goals and performance. He has taught college faculty in online credentialing courses for course design and assessment techniques and has developed assessment tools to measure institutional learner outcomes.

Zala has evaluated faculty courses as a Quality Matters peer reviewer. As a dean, he evaluated faculty teaching performance through observation and student feedback of courses. He teamed with faculty on professional development committees to promote course design review for over 200 faculty on two campuses to improve the ways all courses were designed and approved.

As a dean working closely with faculty in both liberal arts and career and technical education programs, Zala has had the opportunity to design strategic plans for institutional outcome assessment, Academic and Technology Master Plans, program accreditation and institutional accreditation. He understands the integration of elements and need to coordinate course to institutional assessment into a comprehensive plan.

Zala worked with colleagues in the Office of the Chancellor to develop a system-level portfolio submission for the Board of Trustees Excellence in Teaching Excellence Awards and as a college dean nominated several of his faculty to receive this award.

Zala Fashant developed campus- and system-level faculty development programming for over 20 years for thousands of college and university faculty via conferences, campus workshops and webinars. He provided over 25 highly-rated presentations at international conferences on teaching and learning.

  • Dean of Career and Technical Education & Dean of General Education.
  • Assistant Director, Center for the Teaching and Learning, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.
  • Professor in Education and Business for Undergraduate and Graduate Education.
  • Chief Design Architect at Encore Professional Development.
  • Course designer, faculty in online and blended university courses, K-12 educator and higher education faculty developer.
  • Presented at international conferences on online learning and faculty development centers, teaching and learning.
  • Presented and directed state faculty development teaching and learning conferences, workshops on campuses and webinars.
  • Taught and coached faculty in course design nationally with Dee Fink through workshops, internationally through an online course and locally through Minnesota State Faculty Credentialing courses preparing them for teaching in the classroom.
  • Evaluate online courses for faculty to meet the standards of the Quality Matters organization.